PAS-C01 Technology Practice Question
A company runs SAP BusinessObjects on AWS and needs to scale the application tier based on CPU utilization. Which AWS service should be used to automatically add or remove EC2 instances?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
AWS Auto Scaling
AWS Auto Scaling can automatically adjust the number of EC2 instances based on CloudWatch alarms for CPU utilization. AWS Elastic Load Balancing distributes traffic but does not scale instances. AWS Lambda is for serverless, not EC2 scaling. AWS CloudFormation is for infrastructure provisioning, not auto-scaling.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS Elastic Load Balancing
Why it's wrong here
ELB distributes traffic but does not add/remove instances.
- ✗
AWS Lambda
Why it's wrong here
Lambda is not used for EC2 instance scaling.
- ✓
AWS Auto Scaling
Why this is correct
Auto Scaling can adjust instance count based on CPU metrics.
- ✗
AWS CloudFormation
Why it's wrong here
CloudFormation provisions resources but does not auto-scale.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PAS-C01 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Amazon Web Services certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PAS-C01 exam.